In times of immense interrelated and pressing societal challenges, collective action has become more important than ever. Community enterprises, i.e. businesses that are established, owned and controlled by the members of a local community, are praised to be a powerful mechanism for local self-development. Despite increasing relevance and prevalence, we know very little about community enterprise creation. In this study, we set out to explore why some communities tackle their problems through community enterprise creation whereas others, facing similar problems do not. Identity theory emerged as a suitable lend for this realm. By means of an explorative case study based on in-depth data from two German community enterprises, we show that prior identification with the local community sets the scene for community enterprise creation, but that actual collective entrepreneurial action needs to be unleashed and fueled by certain identity cues, most importantly by an explicit in-group threat. Furthermore, we fi...